GCS proceeds into fact finding

December 29, 2004|By Nicole Laskowski, Staff Writer

GAYLORD - The Gaylord Community Schools (GCS) Board of Education unanimously passed a resolution earlier this month authorizing a petition to push mediation sessions with the Gaylord Education Association (GEA) into fact finding. According to the Michigan Employment Relations Commission (MERC), fact finding is the last option between two parties who have reached an impasse in contract negotiations.

"This is all a tool used in bargaining," said Chuck Herring, a local Michigan Education Association (MEA) Uniserv director for 12 years and a retired teacher. "If mediation isn't working, take it out of everyone's hands and put it into the hands of a neutral party, an outsider who is not biased."

The GCS board and GEA bargainers have been in negotiations since July, meeting 11 times in face-to-face bargaining sessions and twice in mediation sessions. The board admitted in a prepared statement that the remaining issues are economic and include both salary and insurance benefits.

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If fact finding does not yield an agreement, according to MERC, the board is able to impose its last offer onto the teachers, although Herring does not believe this to be the case.

"I think they can implement what they'd like," Herring said. At one time, he noted, that would have meant a district's last, best offer.

"But it's not being practiced," he added.

Ruthanne Okun, director for the Bureau of Employment Relations for Michigan, doesn't have a statistic regarding these hearings, but would guess that fewer than 10 percent of contract negotiations enter into a fact-finding process.

"Negotiations are becoming more difficult because of increasing insurance costs and pension costs," said Okun. "We are seeing more fact-finding hearings than ever before."

The fact-finding process happens in several steps. A fact finder has to be agreed upon by all sides from a list MERC provides. A fact finder is a neutral party and an expert in labor issues. After this, a hearing takes place where each side will have an opportunity to present its "facts" or its side of the issue.

The fact finder then puts together a brief or a list of recommendations based on this hearing in a nonbinding public report.

After recommendations are made, the parties can return to mediation for a 60-day period to come to an agreement.

"Sixty days is a minimum," said Barbara Ruga, an attorney out of Grand Rapids who represents the Kenowa Hills School District. "It's not a hard and fast kind of thing."

"Usually in an imposition it gets really ugly," said Herring. "I would do everything I could to get that unit to go out on strike. I may be a little radical, but I think that's about as mean-spirited as an employer can get. And why should I roll over?"

The fact-finding process could last from four to six months, Okun said.

GCS is facing between $900,000 and $1.7 million in budget cuts that will have to be made for the 2005-'06 fiscal year in order to balance the budget. The district already has dealt with lower-than-expected enrollment, dipping into its fund equity for an additional $127, 300.

"With funding being frozen, enrollment declining and costs going up, these are tough times for everyone," said Ruga.